


A Miss Is As Good As A Mile

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: Smart People [3]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 13:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3291335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah Page (Egyptology) welcomes Lorraine Wickes (Economics) home. Strange goings-on are discussed, including, but not limited to, colleagues rushing off to the Forest of Dean on no notice whatever, hopeless first-years with major crushes on librarians, and snotty small children hiding in the museum and getting the fright of their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Miss Is As Good As A Mile

            The flat door flew open and hit the wall, chipping the paint. “Let’s elope!” the new arrival announced, dropping her businesslike black rucksack on the floor and letting the door bang shut.

 

            “Sure,” Sarah said, expertly tucking a biro into her messy chignon, where it joined three pencils and a highlighter. “Egypt?”

 

            “Why not? I’m told the Nile is lovely at this time of year.” Lorraine paused, and eyed Sarah with a certain amount of confusion. “Sarah... why are there pens in your hair?”

 

            “Because that way I don’t lose them?” Sarah suggested, gesturing at her surroundings. Lorraine duly examined them and, realising that Sarah was not in fact drowning in an excess of paper but lying on her stomach on the floor with carefully categorised research spread around her, conceded the point. “How’s CMU?”

 

            “Appalling,” Lorraine sighed, picking her way through a small forest of textbooks and collapsing on the sofa. “Cutter – you know Cutter, evolutionary zoology, nutcase with a pretty assistant, ginger hair and strong Scottish accent?”

 

            “Yes,” Sarah said, clearing a path to the sofa and sitting down on Lorraine’s feet. “What’d he do now, get caught shagging Hart over his desk?”

 

            “Oh, I bloody wish,” Lorraine said, extricating her feet and resting them in Sarah’s lap. “Nothing so... unproblematic. He’s only gone gallivanting off to the Forest of Dean after his wife, who’s been legally dead for at least the past five years. And he’s taken Hart with him, and one of his students, and another student who isn’t actually his student but just _happened_ to be handy. You know how he sweeps people up.”

 

            “Oh, god, yes,” Sarah groaned, and caught Lorraine’s eye. Both of them shuddered.

 

            “We agreed never to speak of that again,” Lorraine said, collecting herself. “Anyway, Cutter missed a meeting with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and you can imagine how well that went.”

 

            Sarah snorted. “Lester’s a grumpy bastard whichever way you slice it.”

 

            “Yes,” Lorraine said thoughtfully. “Yes, you could say that.” She shook herself. “He won’t have meant a word he said. Even if it was a meeting about funding.”

 

            “Mm,” Sarah said, suddenly finding a lot to interest her in Lorraine’s shirt buttons. “Does he know about us?”

 

            Lorraine squeaked, shifted, and allowed herself to be pushed back onto the sofa. “That tickles! Yes, he does. He made a rude remark about alphabetical order, but that was it.”

 

            Sarah paused in her attack on Lorraine’s shirt – according to her, she hadn’t realised that plaid shirts came in tasteful, quiet black and grey, but as she had told Lorraine on multiple occasions, there was a first time for everything – and thought for a moment. “Economics and Egyptology? Fair enough, but surely on that logic we’d be having an orgy with Cutter and Hart at every opportunity?”

 

            Lorraine gaped at her.

 

            Sarah smiled her ‘believe me, I’m not crazy, I just look it!’ smile. “Evolutionary Zoology?”

 

            Lorraine rolled her eyes and let her head thunk back against the sofa’s arm. “Ha ha, very funny. Guess who I had to tell off for not keeping her mind on the lecture today.”

 

            “Who?” Sarah demanded, dealing with the shirt once and for all.

 

            “Jess!”

 

            Sarah squawked. “That colour-blind one with the red hair? Oh my God!”

 

            “I know!” Lorraine shook her head. “She’s obsessed with the librarian.”

 

            “Can you blame her?” Sarah asked, waggling her eyebrows, stern face transforming into the essence of a dirty joke apparently effortlessly. “Hilary’s hot. And he wears such very tight t-shirts.”

 

            Lorraine raised an eyebrow. “Should I be worried?”

 

            Sarah kissed the end of her nose. “No. Not unless you think he’s hot too, in which case you may have to go down the station and bail me out for attempted kidnap of Hilary Becker, librarian.”

 

            Lorraine smiled and wondered whether or not Sarah was joking. Sarah would try most things once, and that included falling off Connor Temple’s skateboard into the six inches of water in the decorative pond-thing while refuting his mate in Physics’ more oddball theories about the Pharaohs, despite the fact that that was probably below the dignity of a wise and sensible PhD student with a steady job and a steadier girlfriend. Unlike most of the university, Lorraine knew this was not just a wildly exaggerated story; she had collected Sarah from Accident and Emergency, still arguing with Tom whatsisface - the doctors had decided that she wasn’t concussed on the basis that she could still pronounce the name of Pharaoh Seqenenre Tao II. “I’ll think about it,” she said eventually.

 

            Sarah grinned. “Feel free to unburden your mind whenever.”

 

            Lorraine merely sighed. “I see the First Intermediate Period is proving awkward.”

 

            Sarah looked quizzical. “How?-“

 

            “You only jump me the moment I get in the door if your thesis is going badly,” Lorraine pointed out, propping herself up on her elbows.

 

            “Ah.” Sarah shrugged and looked a little sheepish. “It’s not that bad; I might need to make a trip to the British Library, that’s all. A nuisance, but not that bad.”

 

            “Oh, right.” Lorraine let herself flop back down again. “How was the museum?”

 

            “Ugh. Mary’s a pain in the arse.” Sarah glowered. “Wouldn’t let me have five more minutes with the latest artefact, even though it’s absolutely vital to my research. Apparently it’s destined for Pyongyang, of all the bloody places! And a kid nearly got locked in the museum and when we found him he was banging on about some crocodile god.”

 

            “Please tell me you didn’t tell him that he was a very bad boy to have gone and hidden in the loos and if he upset his mummy by doing it again Sobek would eat him all up?” Lorraine begged, closing her eyes in mild horror.

 

            Sarah grinned. “Ammut, actually, although I’m impressed you knew who Sobek was.”

 

            “If you will bring your work home with you,” Lorraine teased.

 

            “Oh, like you can talk.” Sarah leant down and kissed her. “But you know the weird thing?”

 

            “Other than your predilection for scaring small children?”

 

            “Please, he was at _least_ eleven. No. There were wet footprints in the area where he said he saw the crocodile god. Huge things, Lorraine. Like a cross between a lion’s paws and a crocodile’s claws. I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it!”

 

            “Ha ha,” Lorraine said tolerantly. “Do you think he was right, then?”

 

            “No,” Sarah laughed, wrinkling her nose. “I think someone was taking the piss! But I still had to trail some snotty little object through four exhibits and nine galleries, and let me tell you, it was a pain in the arse.”

 

            “And I suppose you expect me to make it up to you?” Lorraine sighed mock-wearily, and slid her hands under Sarah’s shirt.

 

            Sarah grinned. “Pretty please?”  

 


End file.
